Animal rights movement People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is claiming US retailer Liz Claiborne has joined the boycott of Australian Merino wool due to the practice of mulesing.

PETA is a shareholder in Liz Claiborne and made a statement to the company's AGM back in May 2005 urging it to stop buying Australian wool.

The US based animal rights campaigner has been running a media-savvy anti-mulesing agenda involving retailers and celebrities since 2004 when Abercrombie and Fitch announced it was no longer buying Australian wool.

An AWI spokesman said at the time the company did not purchase any Australian wool and questioned whether Liz Claiborne used any wool in its garments.

Liz Claiborne has annual sales of close to $A7 billion and owns the brands Juicy Couture, Kate Spade and Lucky Brand Jeans.

READER COMMENTS

Australian woolgrowers should run a PR and advertising campaign in the US which states the case for mulesing. Such a campaign should call on Americans to boycott retailers such as Liz Claiborne who support the radical views of PETA. Many Americans would respond to such a call and other retailers will be less likely to follow Liz Claiborne if they know Australian woolgrowers will not continue to behave as victims of big business bullying.

An early Christmas present from the new AWGA led AWI Board. Wally's comments on the 2010 deadline immediately after the AWI AGM had two catastrophic effects: it spooked retailers who thought the Australian industry was backsliding on its promises and secondly, it reignited PETA. Four weeks have passed since the election. What is the hold up with the marketing plans? They were ready to roll. What has happened to Woolmark? It should be out in the field as we speak. Will AWI bow to pressure from the Europeans and drop the term "Australian Merino"?

With production forecast to fall a further 7% next year somebody has to drop out of the trade for want of wool. This year it is Liz Claiborne. In 2004 it was Abercrombie and Fitch and others for the same reason. In recent times it was Hugo Boss and others for the same reason. While it is certainly not their intention PETA has assisted us here to restore stability in the trade by hastening the rationalisation process. For the third time PETA is scoring the easiest of goals. Somehow our new leadership must ensure that PETA's dream run soon comes to an end. There has to be a plan to get the price up to a level which supports restoration of production. Only when production has been restored can it be of use to begin again to promote wool to those retailers who have given up on wool. Maintain a dialogue with them for sure, but at the moment we just don't have the wool to supply them.

I agree with Darcy. AWI should not bow down to these urban terrorists. Rather, they should fight them with weapons they understand. When a retailer sees their opposition still selling high quality woollen products whilst they are supporting petty PETA, watching the bottom line fall further, how long do you think that it will take for a business executive to reverse a ban on Aussie wool? The target for AWI is to retain the retailers it already has. If PETA wants to fight a guerilla war, respond with stronger tactics, the almighty dollar! Does the new AWI have the nerve to face them down? I hope so. It is not worth responding to Liz Claiborn seeing as PETA are share holders. Just isolate them!

A campaign should be run in australia and then spread worldwide to boycott any retailers who support PETA, farmers should start this and it would be very easy to get the rest of the community on board as they are fed up being told what to do by radicals. Peta should be attacked and not consulted, why consult and talk with rubbish like this? Read peta's website and their ultimate aim is for all animals to live free! and no meat be eaten. These people should be treated with contempt and their views ignored

Has Peta ever seen a sheep covered in maggots being eaten alive? Would the people of Peta like an infestation crawling over them? To bear the smell, I am sure the public would be outraged if they thought that Peta was prepared to stop mulesing but allow the sheep to put up with the crueltly of fly maggots eating them alive. Regardless of other treatments there will be more sheep die of flies with out mulesing than with mulesing. Being done so young it is a far better practice than doing nothing at all. If you stop mulesing are you also going to stop marking of lambs, tailing and ringing because this is cruel too!!!

Darcy's idea of advertising the case FOR mulesing will be hard! Surely it is avoidable by reducing the folds on the sheep through breeding, and more care to the animals. We don't treat dogs' mange by cutting off the skin! Surely mulesing it brutal, an overkill, and just requires more organic methods and holistic treatments for flystrike.

Guess it's time to stop treating animals like a commodity. Like they don't count or feel pain. Time to stop tampering with them, stop giving them steroids to grow quicker, stop taking their babies away, stop interfering with their normal breeding patterns and stop eating them. We humans have a lot to answer for. And we will (are) answer for it - there's no choice. Why can't we just love them and let them be? Why do humans believe it is their right to exploit animals, make money out of them and interfere with animals' natural growth processes?

Mulesing may seem excessive but at present it is the only thing we have got that is 100% effective. All the alternatives so far have only varying degrees of success and therefore leave an attraction within the mob and puts other animals at risk. The idea of mulesing is to allow the waste from an animal to pass with very little dampness remaining and therefore drying very qickly removing any attraction for the blowfly. It has been said in the past that we just put our sheep in a paddock and hope to see them all in a couple of months. Let me assure you that this is not the case, regular monitoring is done, however the first thing a flyblown sheep does is leave the mob and in 15-20 thousand acre paddocks with a bit of scrub they may never be found in time. PETA should be shown up for the radicals they are as it is obvious that they will not condone anything done with animals. Nature can be one of the cruelest things with animals being attacked by other animals and birds and dying a slow painful death usually eaten alive until their prey stikes a vital organ or bleed to death. So with mulesing it is a case of being a little cruel to be very kind and with the use of trisolfen these days the procedure has little effect on the lamb post mulesing and behaves as if nothing has happened. If you enjoy your lamb chop, sunday roast or any of the other succulent cuts available in the Butcher shops these days please spare a thought for us woolgrowers that have been tried and found guilty, by a mob of radical vegetarians that feel important being in a group of a couple of million members with no broad ideas about how the world revolves, with no options available to us to be able to comply with a deal that should never have been promised.